Silver-haired Tito Sanchez slowly paced the length of the bench in the hall outside a Douglas County courtroom the morning of April 4.

He hadn’t slept well in years, and the previous night had been no different. He had awakened — for good — at 1:15 a.m. on the day he expected good news about his grandson’s court case.

Within the hour, the charge of felony sexual assault on a child against Tyler Sanchez, a young man with intellectual and hearing impairments, was dismissed. And on Thursday, in another victory for the family, the remaining misdemeanors were dropped.

But the Sanchez case is a study in how even a win in the criminal-justice system can be painful.

For nearly three years, the family flinched at passing police cars, rearranged their lives to accommodate dozens of court dates, drained bank accounts and lived in fear that Sanchez would spend his life in prison.

They’re angry that it took so long to resolve a case with little evidence against the young man.

“The toll this has taken on this family has been too much,” Tito Sanchez said.

Chief Deputy District Attorney John Topolnicki said the case was delayed by unusual questions about Tyler Sanchez’s disability — and that investigators and his office acted in the belief they had apprehended the right person.

“I can understand how the family feels, believe me,” Topolnicki said. “I would agree that it is a tragic situation for them if in fact Mr. Sanchez didn’t do this.

“We did not want to stretch this out.”

“I just got cold chills”

Cindy Sanchez got her first glimpse of the havoc descending on her family after midnight July 17, 2009. That morning, she saw her youngest son, then 18, sitting handcuffed on the lawn.

A police officer had spotted him driving out of a neighborhood where a backyard trespasser was seen wearing dark clothing and a ball cap similar to Tyler Sanchez’s McDonald’s uniform.

A rash of break-ins and a high-profile report of a man climbing into an 8-year-old girl’s second-story window and molesting her had area police on high alert.

Over the next 17 hours and during multiple interrogations, Sanchez confessed to several of those crimes. The felony sexual-assault charge carried a penalty of up to life in prison.

“I just got cold chills. It was the worst thing you can think of ever happening to your child, and with Tyler?” said his father, Anthony Sanchez. “We had no clue what to do.”

Court-ordered evaluations later revealed that Tyler Sanchez’s intellectual and hearing impairments, coupled with an anxiety disorder that flares up around authority figures, made it easy to put words in his mouth. It also made it impossible for him to competently waive his Miranda rights.

Disability or no, there’s no bright line — other than the words “I want a lawyer” — that signal a detective to stop questioning.

Problematic confession

Though family members disagree, Topolnicki said he thinks Sanchez’s impairments weren’t immediately obvious. He drives, holds down a job and clearly wrote his confession.

Detectives assumed he was being evasive, not that he wasn’t understanding the questions, the prosecutor said.

Court transcripts reveal that Sanchez repeated many of the details with which he was confronted by his interrogators.

With no physical evidence tying him to the scene of the sex assault, the problematic confession would remain the key piece of evidence against Sanchez for years.

“Now I preach to people: If you get into trouble, do not open your mouth,” said Cindy Sanchez.

She flips through a half-full legal pad in which, in 2009, she noted everything related to her son’s case: phone calls, attorney contacts, the police cars that cruised by several times a day.

It had been a difficult year. She had lost her job. Her husband’s roofing and gutter business had been hurt by the economy. Then Tyler Sanchez was arrested.

At 18, Sanchez was an adult and qualified for free legal counsel through the public defender’s office. But his family opted for an attorney with expertise in mental-heath issues.

In all, family members estimated they will have paid well more than $200,000 in legal fees and expenses, a sum that has drained Tito Sanchez’s retirement savings.

“We just plugged along. I assumed at some point we’d run out of funds and energy and would not be able to fight anymore,” Anthony Sanchez said. “Those are just the hard costs.”

Bond restrictions prevented Tyler Sanchez from visiting grandparents or cousins who lived in the neighborhoods from which he was barred. He took a second job to pay nearly $400 a month in fees for an ankle monitor and regular urine analysis.

The family was constantly on edge. They transferred the title of Sanchez’s car into his grandparents’ name, just in case a police officer decided to run the plates.

The worst part, Sanchez said, “was everything.”

“Not a perfect system”

Prosecutors pursue cases based on whether the evidence supports a likely conviction, and that evidence changes throughout the course of an investigation, said Tom Raynes, director of the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council.

Sometimes, that means innocent people get caught up in law enforcement’s good-faith efforts, he said, speaking generally.

“It’s not a perfect system by any means,” Raynes said.

Topolnicki bristled at the idea he delayed the process or should have dropped Sanchez’s case early on. He asked the lab to rush DNA results. He considered a plea last summer.

Finding experts in Sanchez’s type of disability took time. The lengthy doctor’s evaluation that ultimately showed the young man lacked the capacity to legally confess took more than seven months to deliver, for example.

Defense attorney Iris Eytan pointed out that it was evident from court proceedings that her client had a difficult time grasping abstract legal concepts and that school records dating back to first grade documented his impairment.

As for dismissing, Topolnicki had a typically strong piece of evidence: a confession.

When it became clear the confession would not be admissible in court, he dropped the charges in a way that would make it possible for Sanchez to seal his records in the future, he said.

“We bent over backwards to make sure his rights were protected,” Topolnicki said.

He acknowledged the Sanchez family isn’t likely to see it that way.

They don’t.

Anthony Sanchez’s cellphone is full of text messages suggesting that he sue for wrongful prosecution. But he is already exhausted with the legal system and eager to move on.

Cindy Sanchez said she would like a public apology in recognition of the difficulties her family has dealt with for three years, though she doesn’t expect one.

“This has consumed us,” she said. “Tyler’s my hero. He’s been so good through the whole thing.”

And Tito Sanchez is throwing a party to celebrate his grandson’s freedom. He booked the mariachi band the day the sexual-assault charge was dropped.

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